Happy April Fools’ Day! When I was growing up, my brother and I treated April Fools’ like a national holiday. You can feel bad for my parents. However, what goes around comes around. Now, with four kids of my own, the tables have turned. My kids really know how to pull some elaborate pranks.

I remember when I first expressed my love for pranks at the workplace. I had a job on a help desk. I was working on developing my technical skills and even did some light ethical hacking to figure out how things really worked.

In between calls fixing issues for end-users, I’d hone my skills and practice on my coworkers with harmless pranks. One of my earliest tricks was using remote execution libraries to issue commands to my coworkers’ computers.

I scripted commands that would automatically eject and retract the CD-ROM tray on a repeating loop. This was good fun. I could make my coworkers think their computers went crazy while I snickered to myself in my cubicle.

As I recall, I didn’t irritate anyone too badly, and everyone had a good laugh about it. Laughing at work is good.

Upping my game

Of course, the CD-ROM gag only lasted so long. Once I “got” someone, there was no point in reusing the same prank. I had to think of something else.

Way back then there was a piece of software called eSheep. It was a cute little sheep that would walk around on the windows of your desktop, eat grass, go to sleep, and do other benign and entertaining things. I just looked it up, and apparently, it still exists. Check it out.

One eSheep walking around your screen was cute. What about dozens of them? I used my Windows remote execution scripting skills to deploy dozens of eSheep to my unsuspecting coworkers. Of course, they could simply right-click and remove each sheep, but my program kept them respawning. It was fun until it wasn’t.

Crossing the line

I’ll never forget the last time I pulled this prank. I deployed the eSheep to my coworker, Beth Singer. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were in the middle of a Priority 1 Exchange Server outage and she was on the phone with Microsoft support. She shot me one look and I knew instantly that I messed up big time.

Priority 1 incidents are very stressful. This was not the time for comic relief. I love making my work environment better, but this time, I made it worse. I apologized and never did it again.

The leadership lessons

1. Engineers need to tinker, learn, and test out their skills to develop. It’s always good to find benign ways to do that. Every tech leader should create an environment where that is possible and encouraged.
2. Work should be fun. If no one laughs during your work day, then there’s something wrong. Laughter solidifies team bonds, increases energy, and sparks creativity.
3. Remember the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Harmless pranks are okay. However, work can be serious and timing is everything. No prank should result in anyone feeling bad or disrupted. Earlier in my career, I had some maturing to do. I learned my lesson.

Those are my leadership lessons from computer pranks. I hope you enjoyed my story. Have a happy and safe April Fools’ Day!

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